


the worst and best of them

by MedicalAssisstanceSpareChange



Category: RWBY
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I wanna explore their past so bad and i can't WAIT, Kuroyuri mentions, Vytal Festival (RWBY), and also more booping because Nora's boops are the best, and their relationship? relationship study? thematic study? i don't know what to call this, besides me writing out my renora feelings in vaguely-meta format, for both ren and nora, god i love them so much i can't wait to write more about them, mentions of past character death, now with more Nora!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27524158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedicalAssisstanceSpareChange/pseuds/MedicalAssisstanceSpareChange
Summary: Ren gets lost in his thoughts and thinks about the day everything changed - the day Nora showed up.
Relationships: Lie Ren & Nora Valkyrie
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm rewatching RWBY for the fourth time and just got to the end of Volume 4 and the RENORA FEELS ARE STRONG (both platonic and romantic) and I just had to write something about them so my brain would let me sleep. Anyways. Ren POV, short and sweet and totally platonic, takes place during the Vytal Festival but that's just set dressing. I'm absolutely gonna write a similar little drabble of Nora's take on the day, probably.... later. Once I get some sleep in me. And more things are gonna come too, because I have So Many Takes on what happened with them between Kuroyuri and Beacon.
> 
> No spoilers of V8 in the comments, please! I've only watched to the end of V7.
> 
> Now edited for typos and tags.

The day Nora showed up was the worst day of Ren's life.

Putting it like that was unfair, but it was true. Nora showed up and the Grimm followed soon after. His mother was crushed to death, his father died defending him, and the town burned around two children with a dagger and a toy hammer huddled beneath a deck.

The day Nora showed up was the worst day of Ren's life, but it was also the day he met Nora, and he wouldn't change that for anything.

"You're thinking extra hard," Nora said, loud in his left ear.

Ren jolted back to reality. The Vytal Festival. Fairgrounds. Food. Nora had roped him into holding several buckets of popcorn and was stealing from all of them as they walked.

He shifted so she could better reach the farthest bucket. "Just thinking about the past," he said quietly, and Nora hummed through a mouthful of kernels.

"Better be about me," she quipped. Her grin was bright as the lightning that coursed through her soul. Ren watched as she swerved into talking about the last fight they'd seen, the doubles with Weiss and Yang versus Flynt and Neon, her hands flying all over and popcorn spraying out of her mouth.

She'd changed since they'd first met. They both had. Ren was glad of it; he'd needed her to become who he was now. Not even the adoration he'd had for his father could have pushed him like Nora, could have saved him like Nora.

Because the day he Nora showed up was the worst day of his life, but it only went uphill from there, and Nora was the reason he'd made it up there at all.

"You're still thinking," she said.

"I'm always thinking."

"The past, still?" She paused, looked at him in that way no one could escape, pinning him to the earth. "About..."

Kuroyuri. His mother. His father. That night.

"You," he replied, and Nora blushed before smacking him on the arm and knocking half the buckets out of his arms.

"Softy," she snorted. "Everyone thinks you're so deep and mysterious but really, you're just a big teddy bear."

"I'm not a teddy bear," he said with a hint of indignance that only she would pick up. "I'm..."

He couldn't come up with anything and Nora knew it. "Teddy bear," she repeated, leaning up in his face and smiling again. "Big ol' teddy bear, Ren, you _softy_."

 _Because of you,_ he thought, but he didn't say it, only smiled and started walking again, certain that Nora would follow. She did, cramming a thing of cotton candy into his arms as they went.

The worst day of his life happened to be the day Nora showed up.

But it also happened that all his best ones came after.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora can't sleep and thinks about the best day of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is absolutely more coming btw, and the chapters will probably start getting longer as I start delving into their characters more. Absolutely no continuity yet, so don't worry about reading everything in order when it comes out.

The best day of Nora's life happened to be the worst day of Ren’s, and some days she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad about it. 

Also, putting it like that sort of made it sound like Ren was the center of her universe, which - well, he was  _ close _ to that, definitely, but not the  _ center _ , that was stupid. He was... at her side. Her universe was centered on herself, and Ren was just always there, too. 

But once upon a time, he wasn’t. 

She remembered the day that had changed. How could she not? She’d gone from overjoyed about finding the bread in the dumpster to cowering at the bullies to terrified at the Grimm, the fire, the screams. So much had happened - more than anything she'd ever experienced before, and she'd been alone and overwhelmed and convinced she was going to die.   


And then Ren. 

And then calm.

“We’ll protect each other,” he’d said, and he’d never failed on that promise since. The best day of her life was the day that promise was made, despite everything. Despite the Nuckelavee and the bullies and the food poisoning she’d gotten a few days later from rotten food. Despite the loneliness and exhaustion and terror. Ren had lost everything, she  _ knew _ that, she knew he still mourned his family and home. But despite his loss... Nora had gained  _ everything _ that day. She’d met Ren. 

The world had changed for her and she’d changed with it, and Ren was by her side the whole time. 

Even now, he was asleep just one bed over. They’d long since moved past the awkwardness of being teens asleep in the same room; they’d grown up together. Too fast, perhaps, but together.

He looked peaceful. He rarely looked angry or upset, but it wasn’t often that she saw him so relaxed, either. She smiled to herself and tapped her fingers on the bedsheet in time to the music blaring in her headphones and was happy. 

He’d done that for her. Saved her, stuck with her, helped her become her own person. Confident, now, strong and steady and training to be a Huntress, Ren at her side like always. 

Not her everything, but close. 

“Nora,” he said quietly, suddenly, not opening his eyes. “Go to sleep.”

She blinked, surprised, then grinned. Of course he knew. It was  _ Ren _ . “Soon. Got some extra jitters from the electrical socket at lunch.”

He opened his eyes then, staring back at her, the both of them unafraid of each other. “Need help?” 

“Nah.” She reached out slowly, and his eyes crossed as she poked the tip of his nose. “Boop.”

He smiled at that, incredibly. She drew back her hand and grinned, noticed the way his eyes lingered on her face and put it aside. 

He was Ren. Whatever happened, with the world, with school, with them, he’d be by her side. 

“Sleep well, Nora.” 

And she’d be by his, too. 

Best day  _ ever _ .


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren thinks about the color pink and its importance to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I joined a server, someone reminded me of a tumblr post I made, and I decided to finish this chapter up. Next one will be a similar topic and Nora's point of view; I'm thinking this is officially going to be a collection of little character studies by these two. Let me know if there's anything in particular you want to see from this fic! I have another one in the works, a proper slowburn au, but it'll be a good while before that's ready.
> 
> If you want to come talk to me about Renora, or RWBY in general, I'm on tumblr @thereiscalmbeforeastorm.

Ren had always liked the color pink, long before he met Nora.

His mother’s eyes were pink. In springtime, the forest flowers were pink, and sunset brought pink clouds, and the baby animals he liked to watch had little pink noses and tongues. And when they bloomed, the lotus flowers in the town canals were pink.

He’d rarely worn it, though. He’d wanted to be like his father, with his long green coat and his low ponytail, trying to do the right thing, even if he didn’t know what it was. His mother was the one who liked pink; his father wore green, the better to blend into the forest and protect the village. 

Well, he supposed, he’d managed that. With his Semblance, he could blend into anything as far as the Grimm were concerned.

And it had helped him protect Nora, if not the place he’d been raised in.

Nora  _ was _ pink. Her shirt and her favorite color and her pants and the heart symbol were pink. Magnhild’s grenades and her electricity were pink. She was as vibrant and soft and warm as the color itself, and often, Ren found himself thinking that his mother would have loved her. 

He was his father’s son. He wore green.

He was his mother’s son, too. Pink snuck its way in.

The hair streak had been there forever, surprisingly easy to maintain. His eyes betrayed his mother’s influence, her genetics. But it was elsewhere. He remembered selling his green jacket, the one with the pink shoulder pads, that he’d worn the night he met Nora. She’d hugged him around the neck then, terrified and aching for a bit of kindness. He remembered thinking about that as the shopkeeper pressed some lien into his hand; his father’s color, his mother’s influence, and Nora’s touch.

Whenever he could get away with it, he wore green, but there was always pink too.

Beacon Academy was no exception. Despite the calm scheme of his battle uniform, there was pink at the cuffs; a little reminder to himself and to the world at large that he was multifaceted, not as one-dimensional as he seemed. He knew people who weren’t Nora thought he was just the quiet kid with an old soul, the same way they thought Nora was just an eternal sugar rush. Even if they didn’t know what the pink meant, it was important. It was his past and his family and his best friend.  


And it grew. After Beacon fell, when he knew they would be returning to the forests around Mistral, he made sure his gloves had plenty of pink on them. He’d grown since he’d left Kuroyuri, and the pink was a reminder for when he couldn’t see anything but the green, green, green of his forest and coat and Stormflower. Nora took his hand often in the forest, to get his attention or pull him aside or just because she needed support.

It felt right, in those moments, to look down and see the pink spreading up from where their hands were touching. 

Kuroyuri happened, again, and he proved himself right. Down beneath a deck, the same one they’d met each other under, the girl he could no longer separate from the concept of pink took him by the hand and refused to let him die, blinded by his own grief.

Most people saw red when they were angry, but Ren saw green. A way to calm himself, a reminder of what he was trying to be, a color threatening to take him over.

“I’m not going to just let you kill yourself,” Nora said in a tone he hadn’t heard in years from her, and he looked down to see the pink of his gloves and the pink of her skirt, and he saw clearly again.

He’d needed that color, then - needed Nora - to survive. 

An Ren would have absolutely  _ loved _ Nora, he decided.

By the time they reached Atlas, it was a much more conscious choice. He’d spent all of Haven and the trip to Argus seeing pink in his face every time he so much as lifted a hand. It was a constant reminder of Nora at this point, even if she was right next to him like she always was, and - frankly, it was a bit distracting.

“What’re you thinking for the outfit?” the Atlas technician asked, and Ren suddenly knew.


End file.
